A Complete Waste of Time
A Complete Waste of Time is a forum adventure by clandestineTechie set in Alternia of the Homestuck universe. Its art style imitates that of Homestuck as well. It is a story of a bunch of trolls doing mundane things. The adventure is currently on a very unreliable update schedule. The author also roleplays as the currently active troll on pesterchum to supplement the adventure. Characters Lorrex Kobol (aegisMason) The first troll introduced in the adventure, who also goes by the trolltag "aegisMason". The player attempted to nickname him Infinity, but Lorrex hated the idea. His shirt bears the alchemical symbol "distill". Lorrex cloaks himself in a "protection comforter", which is a white security blanket. He apparently types in lime green and in "aver ystructure dcod etha tan ynumbskul lcoul dfigur eou t", though Lorrex has yet to send a message over trollian. He is a cyber security expert and his home is littered with traps and security cameras. His fetch modus resembles a rubik's cube, which can apparently only retrieve items from solved faces. Since the cube has yet to be scrambled, it seems to operate in a perfectly sane fashion. According to his description, Lorrex is very bad at solving puzzles. A hassle involving the rubik modus is inevitable. His strife specibus has been allocated to towershieldkind. Lorrex's chumproll includes 15 other trolls, whose trolltags utilize all combinations of the letters AMPE. The ones he has encountered in the adventure have called into question what his standards of a "friend" are. This seems to be a running theme in this adventure. He may or may not have been killed by falling a great height on his spine. Viridian Adjang (migrantMorality) After Lorrex had a lapse in judgement, the player became Viridian Adjang (whatever that means). The player called her Missing and Rude when she dream walked away from sight. Her headband (and in the past, her shirt) bears the alchemical symbol for earth. Viridian is a wanderer, who seems to have complete control over the natural world (verified when she constructed a home out of a sandy beach). When talking to plants she connects to the great life network and can also be contacted via instant messaging. Her "typing" quirk is replacing the letters i, l, m, n, and w with similar looking symbols comprised of slashes (\,/,|), which is odd in the present, seeing as her messages seem to be her thoughts but shut up it's magic we ain't gotta explain shit. Her strife specibus has been allocated to planetkind, (though it was only recently that her powers were thought of as a weapon). In the past, she wore a more typical troll getup, and lived a very boring, isolated life on a cliffside. She isn't popular among the 16 trolls; most of them seem to have a very apathetic relationship towards her. In a freak coincidence, her home was destroyed by a meteor while she was outside dream walking. She unwittingly saved herself from drowning, and started a life on the isolated island. She seems to have a strained relationship with her "friends". Like Lorrex, she refers to them as "jackasses". Viridian "represses" people she dislikes instead of blocking them. Apparently her only friend is patienceEngine (and plants). Chad Saturn (entertainingAmmo) Chad is the third playable troll in the adventure, and first one mentioned after Lorrex. His shirt shows the alchemical symbol for Lead/Saturn. He is a total badass with yoyos, as he knows all the tricks and invents new ones "to keep ahead of the crowd". He also weaponizes them. He seems to live in a giant warehouse of unknown size, and spends his days going on adventures finding new cool shit. He organizes his findings based on how cool they are, on an arbitrary scale of "coolians". He seems to have reckless disregard for how little his friends actually care about the things he does. Chad also knows how to sew. EA speaks in red text and emphasizes certain words in all caps. He also says "DUDE" a lot. His rat lusus, Packers, is dead due to an accident involving a massive shelf collapse. If ??????????????? is to be believed, Chad was responsible for this death while attempting to escape the warehouse. As with the other trolls introduced in the adventure thusfar, he thinks his friends are jackasses, especially prescriptionMiasma (for whatever reason). ethicalProxy A friend of Lorrex's, confirmed to be female in a conversation with Viridian. Her typing quirk seems to be adding an asterisk at the end of messages, and then explaining the asterisk in the following message. EP doesn't like most of the trolls, though she is friendly to EE. She is "awake but doesn't know it", which may have given her some powers similar to Viridian's. It would seem that whenever EP says something, it happens. Given EP's trolltag, she may be into law and contractual obligations. This gives credit to the theory she has predestination powers. equitableMasochist A friend of Lorrex's. EM seems to replace the letter e with an equality sign, suggesting she is very similar to ethicalProxy. She tried to cut Lorrex a deal where she would close his door for him, but in doing so also expose a giant security hole in Lorrex's legendary firewall. EM's trolltag suggests that deals like this are stricken often. prescriptionMiasma A friend of Lorrex's and an enemy of Viridian's. PM seems to talk exclusively in sarcasm, and replaces long vowel sounds with a capital version of that letter. (i.e. dAys, complEtelE, rIght, wOn't, U (you)). It was recently confirmed she is female (and according to Viridian, a "bitch"). patienceEngine Viridian's best friend. She speaks in the third person, begins messages with "..." and triples punctuation. She tends to go without talking to people for extended periods of time for reasons not explained. She seems to be in cahoots with enigmaEducator. About the topic of Viridian's accident in the past, EE says "?o what !? your next move? You got her !nto th!?. !t'? your call." This could be just saying that because PE got Viridian the plant she needed to water she was indirectly responsible. Equally likely, she is responsible for the meteor itself. enigmaEducator A troll who is in contact with the other characters of the story. She contacts PE to let her know that Viridian is drowning, and asks what her next move is. His/her typing quirk is replacing the letters S and I with ? and !, respectively. She may be omniscient, to a degree, since she knew Viridian was drowning (though not shown to be anywhere near the cliffside). EE's trolltag supports this theory. mishapEngineer In a fan pesterlog, mishapEngineer is described as an inventor who makes things that will purposefully fail. He asks Chad for captchalogue codes on a regular basis, which means he probably has access to an alchemiter outside of Sburb. Chad describes him as incompetent, but he might very well be a genius. All of the above is very likely given his trolltag. percolatedPlasma One of Chad's friends. He seems incredibly irritable, and his trolltag reflects this (or might just be tired of hearing about Chad's daily exploits). His typing "quirk" seems to be the result of him punching his keyboard haphazardly. During a pesterlog, he destroyed his keyboard in rage. He is represented by the alchemical symbol for Potassium, which is a notably reactive element. Plot Synopsis (Warning: spoilers may ensue.) A troll named Lorrex sits in his respiteblock at the end of a very uneventful day. He checks for intruders, but finds nothing but traps everywhere, and feels safe. He receives some messages from his friends, but they cannot reach him because of his overpowered firewall. Lorrex ignores his firends and instead feels inclined to check to make sure his front door is locked, because he is not quite sure about the matter. Preparing for the adventure, he captchalogues a rope, a box of fruit gushers, and a yoyo (but not before playing around with it). Lorrex also plays with a colorful puzzle cube that he has been unable to solve, but accidentally breaks it. At this point, he checks the messages sent to him earlier by three of his friends (entertainingAmmo, ethicalProxy and equitableMasochist) , confirming that his front door is in fact open, and someone may have intruded. Lorrex checks one of his security cameras, and sees his home partially vandalized with black paint. He flips the fuck out and sends his robot army down at the potential intruder, only to have them fall down a bunch of stairs. The robots effectively barricade Lorrex in his room, and he plots to rappel down from his window to lock the door. However the rope he uses is too short, and he ends up about 2/3 of the way down his tall, spire-like home. He decides to fall the rest of the distance, and lands on his back. Everything flashes to black. A female troll named Viridian is shown sleeping in the forest. She wanders off sleepwalking before the player can name her. Upon waking up she talks with a vine, but is interrupted by one of her "friends" (prescriptionMiasma). She represses her friend's behavior and is comforted by the vine. Viridian talks with a friend of hers (patienceEngine) decides to find a new home, where it is then revealed she is currently on a small island near a steep cliff, presumably in the ocean. Looking around and finding nothing, Viridian constructs a gigantic temple-like mansion out of sand and trees using phenomenal nature powers. Looking around inside, Viridian finds a computer, which brings her "way back". Past Viridian is shown talking with PE, who recently sent her a pot and seed. Viridian has planted the seed, and it is growing into a small tree, which she says is "so cool". PE tells her she needs to water it every day. This proves to be difficult, since Viridian lives on a sharp cliff. To fetch the water, she attempts to dream walk. While doing so, anything she can dream up is also done with her physical body. She levitates to the water's surface, but a meteor strikes her cliffside home, and the resulting explosion wakes her up. Viridian's dream self ceases to exist, and she is left treading water in the sea. Shortly after she drowns, because she does not know how to swim. Elsewhere, a series of conversations takes place. EE (engimaEducator) contacts PE and informs her that Viridian is drowning. PE invites EP to the conversation and asks what she would do if one of her friends is in trouble. Reluctant to be of any use, EP eventually says that "mm can go help herself", upon which PE thanks her and leaves. Soon after, Viridian helps herself by forming a bubble around herself, and floating to the island. She finds her potted plant, and starts talking to it. The flashback ends, and the player tries to be less crazy by becoming enigmaEducator, and fails because enigmaEducator isn't less crazy. Instead, they become Chad. After showing off some crazy tricks, he tells one of his friends about the stuff he found that day. Before he can organize it, he is bugged by ME (mishapEngineer), who among other things asks him to join a game with several others. Chad declines, but is then contacted by a mysterious character who tries to persuade him to reconsider. It seems like she has failed. Dreams In the Viridian story arc, we were introduced to the concept of dream walking. Rather than in Homestuck, where Jade had a robot that mimicked the actions of her dream self, the trolls themselves can mimic what they are dreaming (even if it is impossible, such as floating over water). One must never do anything to wake themselves up while dream walking. When Past Viridian's house exploded from a meteor impact, waking her up, her dream-self ceased to exist. Whether or not this is permanent or just what happens when you wake up is unknown. "The Game" Currently being played by mishapEngineer, patienceEngine, ethicalProxy, mindProspecter, aimlessAlchemist, equitableMasochist, prolixAntiphon, and prescriptionMiasma. Nothing is known about it, other than it involves more than one player. ??????????????? tried to convince Chad to play after he declined ME's offer. It seems prescriptionMiasma is in charge of the ordeal, as ??????????????? told Chad to get the files from her. It might be Sburb or some adaptation of it, since meteors have already been introduced. They may be coincidental, though. Lorrex's Chumproll Lorrex Kobol (aegisMason) has 16 trolltags listed in his trollian. It is likely that they will all be introduced later in the adventure. Their names are as follows, bolded names have appeared in the story. *'percolatedPlasma' *'entertainingAmmo' *'mishapEngineer' *'ethicalProxy' *'aegisMason' *mindProspector *aimlessAlchemist *automaticEnd *'equitableMasochist' *'migrantMorality' *prolixAntiphon *'enigmaEducator' *'prescriptionMiasma' *aphoticPuppeteer *'patienceEngine' *muteAspersion Tropes *Color By Technicolor - in particular, the author seems to like landscapes *Hello, Insert Name Here - In compliance with standard homestuck troll introduction procedure. *Voices In My Head - Especially Veridian, even to the point where she tries to find ways to get rid of them. *Author Whip - Lorrex might REALLY be dead. *You Are Now This Guy - "Be _____" and the whole nine yards. Category:Adventures